Evaluation

Evaluation

The PFR evaluation seeks to demonstrate how a comprehensive and sustainable family-centered FDC approach—grounded in effective cross-systems collaboration—improves child, parent and family outcomes, particularly in the areas of child abuse and neglect, reunification, parental recovery and parent-child relationships. The scope of the initiative is multifaceted and complex, and expands across four states in changing sociopolitical contexts. As a result, the PFR Change Team is using a realist approach that expands the role of the evaluation from an examination of program implementation and outcomes to include context and underlying mechanisms. In this framework, mechanisms refer to what it is about the FDC and PFR initiative that bring about change and context describes features of the environment in which PFR initiatives are introduced that are relevant to program mechanisms and outcomes. Additionally, the PFR evaluation framework embeds a feedback loop by which grantees and key stakeholders can monitor and improve performance while building evaluation capacity. The PFR evaluation is designed to answer three main questions:

Family Level – In what context and by which mechanisms do parenting and children’s services lead to:

Improved family well-being?

Improved child welfare outcomes?

Improved substance abuse treatment and recovery outcomes?

Organization Level – In what context and by which mechanisms do operational changes (e.g., leadership, shared mission and vision, interagency partnerships and communication protocols) lead to:

Process improvement?

Implementation and integration of evidence-based parenting and children’s services?